Chan Lowe: Jeb Bush in 2016

Jeb Bush in 2016

August 29, 2012|by Chan Lowe

I blame the late Lawton Chiles for Iraq. It isn’t like he actually had blood on his hands, but if he hadn’t been such a gosh-darned popular governor of Florida, Jeb Bush wouldn’t have lost to him when Walkin’ Lawton ran for reelection in 1994.

Instead, the dumber brother got elected governor of Texas that same year, and by the time Jeb finally snagged the statehouse in 1998, all the bucks and momentum had been directed at W. The rest, sadly, is history. I say “sadly,” because if W’s eight-year stint had been even a partial success, the Republican Party wouldn’t be going to such pains to avoid any mention of the former president’s name at its fiesta in Tampa this week, lest Americans remember that he was responsible for the economic fix we’re in.

Jeb is a “movement conservative,” and feels more passionately about his politics than his older brother, notably because W. never really had much of an opinion about anything until it was programmed into him. Regardless of his politics, we also know Jeb would have been savvy enough not to have allowed himself to be surrounded by Cheney and the rest of the cabal that held W. in thrall. When 9/11 occurred, he wouldn’t have been bamboozled into a war with Saddam, a man few Americans had heard of or cared about before his father famously mispronounced his name a decade earlier.

Jeb Bush, to his credit (and maybe also to maintain domestic tranquility, since his wife is Mexican-born), has wisely suggested that the Republican Party should moderate its extremist policy about immigration. It isn’t just inhumane, Jeb argues; the party will be committing political suicide to continue, considering the direction in which this country’s demographics are headed.

In other words, Jeb is sharp enough not to get hogtied by dogma, like so many of his partisan colleagues. His party could do worse for a candidate. Now, if he can just overcome that little problem he has with his last name...